Archive for the ‘New Work’ Category

Been a long time since an update, I had the pleasure to teach an Introduction to 2D Design studio class this spring. Developing a curriculum based on my pedagogical studies at Arizona State University was extremely time-consuming. However, the 2/3 of the students that stuck through the 10 week course really made incredible advancements both in their craft skills as well as their basic appreciation and understanding of design elements and principles. I was really blown away with some of their work by the end.

At one point in the quarter, we tackled the element of color with watercolors. I feel watercolor is far more forgiving and flexible than acrylic, though you have to think about how colors mix in a very different way. Anyhow, the students did surprisingly well even with my modest personal knowledge of the medium.

Inspired by my students’ experience, as well as needing to provide some work for a show in Helena MT (Horsing Around, curated by Marco Rosichelli), I created a three piece series, Western Pleasure. It is dedicated to all the middle-aged, single women that have chosen to devote their free time and love to horses.

Western Pleasure

The premise of Marco’s show Horsing Around is a response to all the horse art he has encountered in range country. He invited pieces that were playful but NOT the standard western/country/horse art that is prevalent throughout western US galleries.

My pieces refer to a style of riding competition. From equiworld.net: “The western pleasure horse must, above all, look like it is a pleasure to ride.”

One of my oldest internet buddies from the days of Dragon Boy has become a very accomplished artist. Take a look at Ryan Gillis’ art and animations at http://gillizamastudios.com/ . Anyhow, he and his circle of colleagues have started a comic project that should prove to be a blast. I get to be a part of it! We each get to illustrate a couple panels, and then we send the otherwise empty comic book to the next person down the chain in a predetermined list.

Orthodontics- the branch of dentistry dealing with the prevention or correction of irregularities of the teeth

th- a phoneme that replaces the “s” sound in interdental lisps

Sometimes those who get braces have lisps until they learn to better navigate their new dental situation. Sheepshead are a kind of fish that have disturbingly human-like “incisoform” teeth. If there were a field of dentistry that involved putting braces onto sheepshead, it would be called ichthyorthodontics.

If pronounced by a sheepshead with a braces-induced lisp, we’d get the title of this drawing, Ichthyorthodonticth, which has the greatest number of voiceless dental fricatives I’ve ever put into a titular neologism, which illustrates how much of an insufferable smart-ass I can be.

Heck, with the last syllable being identical to the first, I should just print up a long row of these images and call it Ichthyorthodonticthyorthodonticthyorthodonticthyorthodonticthyorthodonticth.

About ten years ago the first cases of Devil Facial Tumor Disease were documented, and as of this year it has affected over 60% of the Tasmanian Devil population. It is, in essence, contagious cancer.

Devils like to bite each other. All the time. When mating or fighting or for no reason. At some point one of the devils happened to develop cancer, as all organisms do from time to time. This sick devil proceeded to bite the face of another, and his tumors BROKE OFF in the facial wounds.

Because the devil population is small and not very genetically diverse, the new devil’s body did not identify the cancerous cells as foreign, and they took root and grew… until they were large and fragile enough that they broke off in the wounds of another devil.

Thus spread DFTD, overwhelming the majority of the devil population. Already devils are adapting; the females are reaching maturity faster than ever to compensate for shortened lifespans. However, things look grim. Devils will likely become extinct in the next few decades without major efforts on our part.

They will join their cousins, the tasmanian tigers, as well as the thousands of other species that have gone extinct in our Holocene epoch. Hopefully the Dodo has room for Taz at Wackyland.

HOORAY! I finished another piece! And I’m not talking about the exuberant firefly above, she is a little thank you present I whipped up for my summer zoo camp boss. I threw her in to counter the mood of my new drawing, Oh Bother.

Oh Bother

Aw, it’s Eeyore! Except as an Elephant! Eeyorelephant! But what’s he doing with that wire? Why did he sever his own trunk, and why are his legs so stitched up?

This was about the most digestible way I thought I could illustrate the horrific phenomenon of elephants triggering poacher snares. The wire snares dig into their legs (here’s a mildly graphic pic of an elephant with scarred legs from africamatters.org), and often in the animal’s attempts to remove the snare they can cut into or even sever their trunks. It’s horrible business.

I became aware of it by watching a clever elephant successfully removing a snare in the following video:

Apparently it’s not always maiming and death for them, as they are remarkably intelligent.

If you’re hungry for more poacher snare art, apparently if you head to the airport in Zambia you can scoop up jewelry made from gathered snares. It’s the idea of a co-op called Community Markets for Conservation, who encourage locals to trade snares and firearms for training in a variety of skills to improve their lives. You can read more here at Newswise.com.

Though I haven’t been making these as quickly as I liked, they will be made even less quickly this summer as I juggle two jobs: summer camp counselor at the zoo and graphic artist at the library. Gonna be around 50 hours a week… whoowhee. Lotsa creative juice being spent at my jobs, not sure how much will be left for art…

Apparently butterflies don’t suck fluids through their long spiraling proboscises. The amount of pressure it would take to draw fluid through such a narrow tube would likely make the critter’s head implode. Instead, fluid is drawn up through a proboscis with simple capillary action, just like a paper towel.

Capillary Action

In this piece I address the monstrously invasive Silver Carp from Asia and its potential to utterly conquer and proliferate across the Great Lakes. Their route of attack is the Mississippi!

After much consultation with friends and colleagues, I have set upon a new course. The plan is to do a dozen or so drawings, get them mounted on bamboo panels, and then go to stores and cafes with the pile and get them hanging.

Having training in drawing, printmaking, and digital media, I have to wonder how I want to tackle the idea of these drawings… they are drawn digitally, and thus can be reprinted without limit. I can assign them edition numbers like they were prints.

On the other hand, as drawings, part of me wants each of them to be unique objects, individual thoughts made manifest and sent out as little tangible ideas, objects that tell a tiny story.

Perhaps there is a middle road, where I make multiples as needed, but change the content in some way to ensure the print itself is unique… perhaps something as simple as changing the hues from color to color.

If you’re living in the west burbs of Chicago, you may wanna drop into the Oak Park Art League gallery to see their current exhibition, Creatures Among Us. It is an animal-themed show that was open to anyone, and on the opening reception they revealed both juried awards as well as a People’s Choice. I sadly missed the reception and haven’t seen it hung yet, but I plan to in the next weekend or so. The show runs until March 5th.

I submitted some older pieces as well as a new drawing, “Bare,” inspired by the mysterious fur-loss of some Andean spectacled bears at a zoo in Leipzig, Germany.